The Lied of the Lorelei…

Below is the song of the Lorelei, a beautiful water spirit with golden hair who lures sailors to their doom with the dangerous beauty of her song.

Lorelei lied

She was probably once a river Goddess. At an even earlier date, I believe her to have originally been the embodiment of Ran, a very ancient Nordic Goddess of deep waters and Death. Her sensual embrace brought the souls of brave Vikings travelling by sea to another realm, in otherworldly ecstasy.

A poem of this name, Lorelei, was made and popularized by Heinrich Heine in 1882. It provides the lyrics for the best known version of the song, and is meant to be sung while passing by the Lorelei rock on the river Rhine. Many people do sing it, as an act of homage to Nature and their ancestors… In essence, it is an ancient Pagan Germanic ritual which survives still….

I first heard this Heathen hymn, the Lorelei, when I was a teenager, with a train and ferry pass, traveling down the Rhine in a river boat. As we approached the sacred mountain everyone grew silent. Someone handed me a card with the words of the song and a picture of the Lorelei on it and we all started singing. It was a haunting, unearthly melody. All of us who sung it felt its power and beauty, and the mystery of it, and its great antiquity. No one mentioned that it was a religious song, but it was evident that we all knew it and felt the awe of it. Together, we sang the lovely, solemn prayer until we passed out of the sight of the great precipice where the spirit of the Goddess seemed to reside. Here is a choral group honoring the Lorelei in similar fashion.

Here is one of the better translations..
Tr. Frank 1998
1. I cannot determine the meaning
Of sorrow that fills my breast:
A fable of old, through it streaming,
Allows my mind no rest.
The air is cool in the gloaming
And gently flows the Rhine.
The crest of the mountain is gleaming
In fading rays of sunshine.
2. The loveliest maiden is sitting
Up there, so wondrously fair;
Her golden jewelry is glist’ning;
She combs her golden hair.
She combs with a gilded comb, preening,
And sings a song, passing time.
It has a most wondrous, appealing
And pow’rful melodic rhyme.

3. The boatman aboard his small skiff, –
Enraptured with a wild ache,
Has no eye for the jagged cliff, –
His thoughts on the heights fear forsake.
I think that the waves will devour
Both boat and man, by and by,
And that, with her dulcet-voiced power
Was done by the Loreley.

May the mysterious Lorelei still reign as long as the rock form she has taken yet hovers over the misty banks of the Rhine…